Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Tomorrow closes a month-long show at Garden Fresh Market in Harrisburg. I had drawn and tacked together a series of maps of the city on things I'd found roadside. I chose maps because I like the way they can tell a particular story. All of these labeled boxes alongside one another trap that story into a very specific time frame. I HOPE I'm not alive when something called Loving Handz Family Care Center goes belly up, but for now I've seared it into posterity (as far as it reaches from one tiny show in one tiny town by ten tiny fingers). By being a map, these pieces insist upon seeing coinciding realities existing at once and in community. They show how the proximity of disparate, even strange in their juxtaposition, entities are the architecture for a diverse city. They show what we care about. It's important to me that the art I create dictates what I care about most. And these days, that's Harrisburg. You can see the rest of the show here. (Interested in purchasing? Prices are negotiable.)

And now welcome to a segment we call This Person Has Surpassed Me, in which I catch wind of someone doing excellent work and would like to tell you about them. Today's guest is Evan Cameron, who is a dear friend and fellow Reclaimer Of Tossed Away Things. His exhibit is the one following mine at Garden Fresh (which, coincidentally, features the best sandwiches of all time.) The invitation reads that Evan "will be opening an art show featuring both visually rendered and redacted Found Poetry that has been lacquered, mounted and roughly framed with reclaimed fencing. These small, rough-hewn moments of emotion are meant to inspire further thought. Many of them seem to come at the middle or end of a longer account conveying an impression of narrative as faint as the whitewashing each piece is bordered by. The collection will be on display at Garden Fresh from January 21-February 20." See you there, kids.

About Liz Laribee

I'm obsessed with dragging broken things out of the trash and making them into other things. It all started when I was broke and needed a quick fix for a bare wall in my living room. Spoiler alert: I'm still broke, but my living room looks great.